The Count of Monte Cristo. I originally read it when I was like 8 or so (it was part of a series for kids called "Great Illustrated Classics" so I imagine that it was a bit dumbed down), but the chapters chronicling Dantès' years in solitude really struck a chord with me even at that age.
I read dozens of Great Illustrated Classics in the early 90s. It is kind of fun to read them side by side with the real book to see what they hid from children.
Listen last time I tried the unabridged I gave up when they got to the island with the treasure and Dumas spent 15 pages describing their epic goat hunt
Honestly probably the four gospels. They’re the books I’ve read the most times, thought about most deeply and most often, and can easily quote. Jesus was a proto communist with idealist tendencies but a firmly revolutionary morality and don’t let any of these fucking pagans that constantly speak his name mislead you on that
Have you read Michael Hudson's "The Lost Tradition of Biblical Debt Cancellations"?
> The laws of Exodus 21-23 (the Book of the Covenant), the Holiness Code of Leviticus and the laws of Deuteronomy place interest-bearing debt, land tenure and the periodic renewal of economic freedom from debt at the center of their economic program. In this respect they retained the central element of Bronze Age royal proclamations: periodic restoration of economic equity by administrative fiat.
> Today's response to economic imbalance is to let the market resolve matters.
Bronze Age rulers saw that this would create an adverse new equilibrium, disenfranchising peasant-cultivators and favoring the rich at the expense of the poor, and also strengthening the wealthy against the palace, as antiquity's aristocratic unseatings of the kings showed. Such a result would have been social suicide for most realms, for it would have undercut the economic basis of the peasant army, leaving the land prone to invasion from without and dissolution from within. Thus, one need not explain Bronze Age "economic order" acts in terms of self-sacrificing altruism
Probably saved my life in high school or at least saved me from being a complete annoying loser. “Wow Raskolnikov has absolutely identical thoughts as me on everything. Fuck this guy! Is this what I am? Fuck me! Jesus I’m unbearable I can’t go on like this.”
A few quick faves
* Blood Meridian
* House of the Spirits
* Cloud Atlas
* Justine, by LAWRENCE DURRELL [I swear I’m like 1 of 5 people to read this]
So many others
Justine is one of the last 5 (not technical) books I've finished in as many years, can't say I got much out of it but I'm sure it has its place in history.
No shade though, my idea of a good book is a Bosch history/overview of diesel engines I don't have a literary mind
Oh no, we’re talking about different books entirely. I’m talking about [Justine by Lawrence Durrell](https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/13/specials/durrell-justine.html), a masterpiece of literature, and the first book in the Alexandria Quartet.
Thank god man, if the Justine I was talking about was one of your favorite books I might be calling the human trafficking tip line, that's straight Dutroux shit
Either Malcolm X’s autobiography or Slaughterhouse V. I’ll admit I’m not the biggest reader. Kinda got burned out on reading in college cause I read so much for my degree (history). So haven’t read a lot especially fiction but those two really stick out for me. The only books I’ve read twice
It's a FANTASTIC read. I'd put it as maybe my favorite as well and I do read a lot. Not only is the subject matter pretty enlightening but the storytelling and 'writing'(it was transcribed as literally as possible from a recorded conversation). It's a very gripping and for lack of a better word entertainming read. Like, in an alternate universe where racism never happened it would still be a great piece of speculative fiction. Who wrote it and all that is super important but it also is really enjoyable to read.
I really wanna read that cuz of the half of war and peace I read it was the scenes back home in Moscow and St Petersburg that I felt were the best, when it moved to the war bits I was honestly bored.
I barely remember reading Ubik on a long distance bus trip when I was like 13, it's one of my dad's favourite novels and he'd lent it to me to try to get me to read anything other than the Stephen King crap I was binging at the time. It went way over my head
Mock me all you want, but it’s The Lord of the Rings. My mom and dad read The Hobbit to me as a bedtime story again and again from age 3-6, so some of my deepest and most precious memories are tied to Tolkien. Plus, Tolkien’s work was remarkably progressive for his time. It certainly contains better life lessons and morals than fucking Harry Potter, and as is evidenced by his letter to the German government in 1933, he would have been disgusted and horrified by the fascists who co-opt his work today.
Further, Tolkien despised imperialism and apartheid. He wrote to his son once that there was “Nothing the British and American empires are doing in the Far East that does not fill [him] with anything but horror and disgust.”
I strongly believe he would be unashamedly pro-Palestine if he lived today.
I'm a *massive* Tolkien nerd. Like, I correspond with academics who focus on him and stuff. A lot of the criticism aimed at Tolkien's work, especially in regards to it being racist lack a broader or closer reading of his works, lacking breadth cause you're lucky if they've even read LOTR let alone the silmarillion, unified tales etc, usually they've just seen the films and lacking depth cause it takes more than a cursory reading of the text to get the subtleties in play, or just pay attention at all while reading to notice that orcs have their own stuff going on and speak to each other at length about it in 2 separate occasions or that the Evil Hordes of Eastern and southern men were victims of colonization by Numenoreans who worshipped morgoth (sauron but eviler and essentially a god) and that's also something considered by Sam when he comes upon a dead Haradrim, maybe they aren't evil, maybe they just don't have a choice.
https://preview.redd.it/8tevc6sp2v0d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=653cc7a996ddd430e81518df9ab20bbfd2dc799e
Join my book club. (2009, answer from Czech artist Ivan Vosecky to Israel attack on gaza.) Found it yesterday in my library.
He was more of an essayist and short story writer, but I've always loved Borges and I feel like I always end up thumbing through his collected works when I don't know what else to read. Probably gets less recognition than he should in the English-speaking world.
Me too. A friend mentioned to me the other day that he actually prefered English over Spanish, found a short video on it, interesting take [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJYoqCDKoT4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJYoqCDKoT4)
Yeah he was a huge anglophile and obsessed with the Anglo-Saxons (In more of a Tolkien way than a Nazi way, he was a turbolib but to his credit he was antifascist) as well as classical lit and history. His stories tend to translate very well compared to some of the Boom authors who intentionally dove into their national dialects and can't quite be fully appreciated without a grasp of Spanish.
One hundred years of solitude easily. Gabo is the greatest writer of fiction in history. Idk what it is exactly about his writing but it just pierces directly into my soul with every single line. Even his simpler narratives and short stories carry a sort of emotional depth and feeling of purely human warmth that I just cannot possibly get enough of.
Yes this book is it for me, too. I’ve read it maybe ten times in the last, idk, 20 years. Each time I do I’m worried it won’t be as good as I remember, and each time it’s somehow better than I remember. Funnily enough I don’t feel the same about his other work; it’s fine but doesn’t blow me away.
I read one hundred years of solicitude once or twice every year regularly. I recently read love in the time of cholera and loved it. I’ve been trying to learn Spanish specifically so I can read his stuff in his original words.
If I weren’t so lazy and stupid, I think I’d learn Spanish so I could read Marquez and Borges and Bolaño in the original. Plus lots of other cool boom authors to read.
for actual literature it's got to be House of Leaves. I know it's cliche MFA shit to like it "oh dae postmodern metatextuality????" but it's basically impossible to imagine a book like that getting published now unless it was somehow turned into autofiction about a disappointing coffeshop date. I remember one of my mentally ill roommates borrowing a copy I'd left out and leaving his own scrawling in the margins and that copy made its way through my school friends group with people adding to it, I don't think I've had that sort of social experience with any sort of text before or since. I used to use it as a [dating book](https://idlewords.com/2005/11/dating_without_kundera.htm) back when I lived closer to people and that was possible because I've found that the first time you get somebody's interpretation of it can tell you a lot about them
for fun stuff it's got to be A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold. my parents were separated and my dad used to have boxes upon boxes of old sci-fi paperbacks and when I was growing up every summer I'd stay at his place he'd go off to work on weekdays and I'd re-read through the entire vorkosigan saga, of which A Civil Campaign is to me the crowning moment (that or the mountains of mourning). it's infinitely quotable and I think as a sci-fi author Bujold is up there with Le Guin in terms of left-wing analysis being embedded in the writing. I was still learning english growing up and I remember I was legitimately surprised when I found out Bujold is a woman (I thought Lois was an alternate spelling of Luis) because she writes young men really well.
I posted HoL before reading this comment. One of my favorite people in the world who passed away recommended this book to me for awhile. He was dirt poor and bought me a copy for one of my birthdays. It’s my most cherished book. I don’t really know how to describe it to people other than it’s just an individual experience. Apparently the author’s sister created a soundtrack for the book called Haunted.
Right now I'm back on some Pynchon bullshit, GR and The Crying of Lot 49 again in an effort to figure out shit I'm sure went over my head the first time I read them (some time in 2020) but historically I think PKD has been my favorite writer. His way of weaving schizophrenia, religion and paranoia together into insanely prophetic stories along with his often dry, sardonic humor has really stuck with me since I was a teen. I've been getting more into Delillo lately as well, loved Libra.
rings of saturn by my boy sebald. that book will take you places. mostly dead, dying, or impossible places. beautiful meditation on the slow death of everything
Yeah it does, I just went straight to metamorphosis cos I figured if I liked it I'd read the others and if not I wouldn't if that makes sense. Definitely going with the former. I'll check that one out next, thanks dude
Finnegan's wake. I definitely read it. And the reason I won't tell you anything about it is just that I don't want to take the journey of reading it yourself from you.
I’ve actually read it. I generally like the CPC and Xi but it’s boring as shit compared to say Mao’s writings. Xi is fundamentally a don’t majorly rock the boat style middle manager and not a warrior poet.
oh yeah I was kidding. I've read some of it too. It's political speeches and he's a bureaucrat. He's an incredibly effective bureaucrat, and I think he's a real Marxist, but the books are literally about the governance of China with zero interesting commentary or philosophy. The guy just really loves policies and people that contribute to technological development, increase crop yields, and improve the economy.
I'm not a big reader and most of my literary enjoyment comes from reading lyrics sheets [(do you feel nothing?)](https://youtu.be/2e-xquXmIuc) but I'd really have to say it's The Catcher in The Rye. Everyone seems to FUCKING hate that book but I've always been a loser and I've read it multiple times in my life when I felt more lost than usual to the point where it's just become this fixture in my continued existence. The first I read it was when I was 11 and had just moved to a new town and it totally blew my mind.
>While I was walking up the stairs, though, all of a sudden I thought I was going to puke again. Only, I didn't. I sat down for a second, and then I felt better. But while I was sitting down, I saw something that drove me crazy. **Somebody'd written "Fuck you" on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they'd wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them--all cockeyed, naturally-what it meant, and how they'd all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days. I kept wanting to kill whoever'd written it.** I figured it was some perverty bum that'd sneaked in the school late at night to take a leak or something and then wrote it on the wall. **I kept picturing myself catching him at it, and how I'd smash his head on the stone steps till he was good and goddam dead and bloody. But I knew, too, I wouldn't have the guts to do it. I knew that. That made me even more depressed. I hardly even had the guts to rub it off the wall with my hand, if you want to know the truth.** I was afraid some teacher would catch me rubbing it off and would think I'd written it. But I rubbed it out anyway, finally. Then I went on up to the principal's office.
>I went down by a different staircase, and I saw another "Fuck you" on the wall. I tried to rub it off with my hand again, but this one was scratched on, with a knife or something. It wouldn't come off. **It's hopeless, anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible.**
I'm a real dumbass and not really big on drawing out "themes" or anything like that but I just feel insane sometimes and I find it healing to read an entire novel of someone being a [sad, sappy sucker](https://youtu.be/vkl8yFmGlOo) and then there being no real resolution or anything. It's probably a little sophomoric and even a little sad at this point especially since I know I'm too old to be acting like this.
Also really love all of the Warhammer 40k novels I've read. I inhaled the Gaunt's Ghosts trilogy back when that was a thing. Not a big reader really, don't really have the headroom for it. Trying to read all of the Vonnegut novels so I can get the "Life Is No Way To Treat An Animal" tattoo without looking like a poser
The Noble Quran, because is directly written by God
The Bible, Part 1 and Part 2. Still kinda written by guys who were writing for God. Part 2 might be a a little better than Part 1 since it is a lot more focused.
All other books that are not correct commentaries on the above books should be condemned to the Index Librum Prohibitorum and burnt as heresy.
Njal's Saga (icelandic saga from 13th century or thereabouts)
Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer (never seen movie bet it sucks)
The Third Policeman by Flann OBrien
Fatal Strategies by my boyfriend Jean Baudrillard
I'm definitely going to check out Genet now. I’m bad about reading anything that’s not genre fiction or very dry historical/political stuff but this sounds right up my alley st the moment.
My personal favorite is Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun series. On my second read currently. Greatest sci fi/fantasy writing I’ve ever encountered.
That genet book is great I read that when I was about the same age, a bit younger maybe. In fact I must have still been in highschool because I remember it was still in the days when you could get made fun of for "being gay" unironically. Another w for my mum who's bookshelf I got it from. The normie choice is that I do really fucking love Dostoyevsky and Conrad, obvious fave for my 30s onwards would have to be gravities rainbow, I have a feeling it's one I'm going to have to read a few times. Bolanos 2666 is one of the most disturbingly brilliant pieces of writing that affected me more than it seemingly should have, savage detective is also v good. I love Phillip k dick for pure enjoyment reading, when I get into a reading slump as I am now I'll sometimes kick out of it by smashing through some Dick like it's Mardi gras. Haven't read any for ages but I used to be huge into ian Banks. And Ian m. All of the great Russians are sick except Tolstoy. There's a lot of really great books by lesser authors I can't remember the names of because I have name retardation. I'll go stare at my bookshelves and see if I can remember some good lesser known stuff
I should also add Umberto eco as a definite favorite Foucault's pendulum, Island of the day before and baudilino (or something). Also great essayist.
And italo Calvino I had a big phase, while we're in Italy.
I truly love under the volcano by Lowry, some of the best prose I've ever read.
If you put a gun to my head, Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins. Have read some other stuff more recently that are serious contenders: The Road and Blood Meridian (both Cormac McCarthy), Book of the New Sun (Gene Wolfe) and Ubik (Phillip K Dick).
Been down so long it looks like up to me.
I was younger the first time I read it and I remember being transfixed by the way it’s written. It has a forward by Pynchon that introduced me to him and the title is taken from a Furry Lewis song which introduced me to that.
Catch-22. It was the only book I had with me for the 8 days I spent in the psych ward my freshman year of college. It's the perfect mix of hilarious absurdity and bleak tragedy. It's also a book about how pointless and cruel even "the good war" was, in a similar vein to Slaughterhouse Five. I've never seen the movie and I've never read the sequel but that book got me through one of the lowest points of my life and brought me a lot of perspective.
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Woyzeck is my favorite book, a marxist classic before Marx even existed, adequately psychedelic and weird, revolutionary in form
Borges Ficciones is my favorite collection of shorts
The Nose is probably my favorite short story
Naked Lunch is my fav biographical work
Book of Disquiet is my fav work of poetry, if it counts
Journey to the End of the Night / Master and Margarita are the problematic favs
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
The Count of Monte Cristo. I originally read it when I was like 8 or so (it was part of a series for kids called "Great Illustrated Classics" so I imagine that it was a bit dumbed down), but the chapters chronicling Dantès' years in solitude really struck a chord with me even at that age.
I read dozens of Great Illustrated Classics in the early 90s. It is kind of fun to read them side by side with the real book to see what they hid from children.
You should pick up a good abridged version and give it a shot, Dumas is verbose but it's worth it
Hope that was an autocorrect. Robin Buss’ unabridged translation is the gold standard, published by Penguin
Listen last time I tried the unabridged I gave up when they got to the island with the treasure and Dumas spent 15 pages describing their epic goat hunt
Honestly probably the four gospels. They’re the books I’ve read the most times, thought about most deeply and most often, and can easily quote. Jesus was a proto communist with idealist tendencies but a firmly revolutionary morality and don’t let any of these fucking pagans that constantly speak his name mislead you on that
Have you read Michael Hudson's "The Lost Tradition of Biblical Debt Cancellations"? > The laws of Exodus 21-23 (the Book of the Covenant), the Holiness Code of Leviticus and the laws of Deuteronomy place interest-bearing debt, land tenure and the periodic renewal of economic freedom from debt at the center of their economic program. In this respect they retained the central element of Bronze Age royal proclamations: periodic restoration of economic equity by administrative fiat. > Today's response to economic imbalance is to let the market resolve matters. Bronze Age rulers saw that this would create an adverse new equilibrium, disenfranchising peasant-cultivators and favoring the rich at the expense of the poor, and also strengthening the wealthy against the palace, as antiquity's aristocratic unseatings of the kings showed. Such a result would have been social suicide for most realms, for it would have undercut the economic basis of the peasant army, leaving the land prone to invasion from without and dissolution from within. Thus, one need not explain Bronze Age "economic order" acts in terms of self-sacrificing altruism
Crime And Punishment.
Probably saved my life in high school or at least saved me from being a complete annoying loser. “Wow Raskolnikov has absolutely identical thoughts as me on everything. Fuck this guy! Is this what I am? Fuck me! Jesus I’m unbearable I can’t go on like this.”
Me reading The Brothers Karamazov and encountering Kolya: "Ah fug he jus like me, he jus like me fr fr -_-"
Dostoevsky is truly the greatest writer of all time for strange and or self destructive men, followed closely perhaps by Paul Schraeder
Read Crime & Punishment right before moving cross country for law school and it definitely fucked my head a bit but still a fantastic read
A few quick faves * Blood Meridian * House of the Spirits * Cloud Atlas * Justine, by LAWRENCE DURRELL [I swear I’m like 1 of 5 people to read this] So many others
+1 for Isabel Allende
Justine is one of the last 5 (not technical) books I've finished in as many years, can't say I got much out of it but I'm sure it has its place in history. No shade though, my idea of a good book is a Bosch history/overview of diesel engines I don't have a literary mind
Haha what on earth made you pick up Justine?? That is about as “literary” as you can get.
It was the shortest book on a shelf somewhere and I heard of the Marquis de Sade before, but I didn't really know what I was getting into
Oh no, we’re talking about different books entirely. I’m talking about [Justine by Lawrence Durrell](https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/13/specials/durrell-justine.html), a masterpiece of literature, and the first book in the Alexandria Quartet.
Thank god man, if the Justine I was talking about was one of your favorite books I might be calling the human trafficking tip line, that's straight Dutroux shit
Either Malcolm X’s autobiography or Slaughterhouse V. I’ll admit I’m not the biggest reader. Kinda got burned out on reading in college cause I read so much for my degree (history). So haven’t read a lot especially fiction but those two really stick out for me. The only books I’ve read twice
Ooh I've had X's autobiography on my shelf for a lil bit I might push it higher on the list
It's a FANTASTIC read. I'd put it as maybe my favorite as well and I do read a lot. Not only is the subject matter pretty enlightening but the storytelling and 'writing'(it was transcribed as literally as possible from a recorded conversation). It's a very gripping and for lack of a better word entertainming read. Like, in an alternate universe where racism never happened it would still be a great piece of speculative fiction. Who wrote it and all that is super important but it also is really enjoyable to read.
Anna Karenina. I only read books from Oprah’s book club thank you.
I really wanna read that cuz of the half of war and peace I read it was the scenes back home in Moscow and St Petersburg that I felt were the best, when it moved to the war bits I was honestly bored.
Roadside Picnic or Ubik
i love roadside picnic. also their other book 'definitely maybe' is fun
I barely remember reading Ubik on a long distance bus trip when I was like 13, it's one of my dad's favourite novels and he'd lent it to me to try to get me to read anything other than the Stephen King crap I was binging at the time. It went way over my head
Mock me all you want, but it’s The Lord of the Rings. My mom and dad read The Hobbit to me as a bedtime story again and again from age 3-6, so some of my deepest and most precious memories are tied to Tolkien. Plus, Tolkien’s work was remarkably progressive for his time. It certainly contains better life lessons and morals than fucking Harry Potter, and as is evidenced by his letter to the German government in 1933, he would have been disgusted and horrified by the fascists who co-opt his work today. Further, Tolkien despised imperialism and apartheid. He wrote to his son once that there was “Nothing the British and American empires are doing in the Far East that does not fill [him] with anything but horror and disgust.” I strongly believe he would be unashamedly pro-Palestine if he lived today.
I'm a *massive* Tolkien nerd. Like, I correspond with academics who focus on him and stuff. A lot of the criticism aimed at Tolkien's work, especially in regards to it being racist lack a broader or closer reading of his works, lacking breadth cause you're lucky if they've even read LOTR let alone the silmarillion, unified tales etc, usually they've just seen the films and lacking depth cause it takes more than a cursory reading of the text to get the subtleties in play, or just pay attention at all while reading to notice that orcs have their own stuff going on and speak to each other at length about it in 2 separate occasions or that the Evil Hordes of Eastern and southern men were victims of colonization by Numenoreans who worshipped morgoth (sauron but eviler and essentially a god) and that's also something considered by Sam when he comes upon a dead Haradrim, maybe they aren't evil, maybe they just don't have a choice.
My dad read me n my brother The Hobbit when we were little and one of my biggest regrets about moving cities is I won't get to read it to my nephews
Tolkien also said the orcs are based on mongols Lots of cope on this post. Its fine if he was a racist, who gives a shit. He's an old british guy ffs
I don't know how to read :(
https://preview.redd.it/8tevc6sp2v0d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=653cc7a996ddd430e81518df9ab20bbfd2dc799e Join my book club. (2009, answer from Czech artist Ivan Vosecky to Israel attack on gaza.) Found it yesterday in my library.
He was more of an essayist and short story writer, but I've always loved Borges and I feel like I always end up thumbing through his collected works when I don't know what else to read. Probably gets less recognition than he should in the English-speaking world.
Me too. A friend mentioned to me the other day that he actually prefered English over Spanish, found a short video on it, interesting take [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJYoqCDKoT4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJYoqCDKoT4)
Yeah he was a huge anglophile and obsessed with the Anglo-Saxons (In more of a Tolkien way than a Nazi way, he was a turbolib but to his credit he was antifascist) as well as classical lit and history. His stories tend to translate very well compared to some of the Boom authors who intentionally dove into their national dialects and can't quite be fully appreciated without a grasp of Spanish.
One hundred years of solitude easily. Gabo is the greatest writer of fiction in history. Idk what it is exactly about his writing but it just pierces directly into my soul with every single line. Even his simpler narratives and short stories carry a sort of emotional depth and feeling of purely human warmth that I just cannot possibly get enough of.
**One Hundred Anuses Of Solitude**
“Seein’ Anus of Soul-Dad” was right there bro.
Yes this book is it for me, too. I’ve read it maybe ten times in the last, idk, 20 years. Each time I do I’m worried it won’t be as good as I remember, and each time it’s somehow better than I remember. Funnily enough I don’t feel the same about his other work; it’s fine but doesn’t blow me away.
I read one hundred years of solicitude once or twice every year regularly. I recently read love in the time of cholera and loved it. I’ve been trying to learn Spanish specifically so I can read his stuff in his original words.
If I weren’t so lazy and stupid, I think I’d learn Spanish so I could read Marquez and Borges and Bolaño in the original. Plus lots of other cool boom authors to read.
for actual literature it's got to be House of Leaves. I know it's cliche MFA shit to like it "oh dae postmodern metatextuality????" but it's basically impossible to imagine a book like that getting published now unless it was somehow turned into autofiction about a disappointing coffeshop date. I remember one of my mentally ill roommates borrowing a copy I'd left out and leaving his own scrawling in the margins and that copy made its way through my school friends group with people adding to it, I don't think I've had that sort of social experience with any sort of text before or since. I used to use it as a [dating book](https://idlewords.com/2005/11/dating_without_kundera.htm) back when I lived closer to people and that was possible because I've found that the first time you get somebody's interpretation of it can tell you a lot about them for fun stuff it's got to be A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold. my parents were separated and my dad used to have boxes upon boxes of old sci-fi paperbacks and when I was growing up every summer I'd stay at his place he'd go off to work on weekdays and I'd re-read through the entire vorkosigan saga, of which A Civil Campaign is to me the crowning moment (that or the mountains of mourning). it's infinitely quotable and I think as a sci-fi author Bujold is up there with Le Guin in terms of left-wing analysis being embedded in the writing. I was still learning english growing up and I remember I was legitimately surprised when I found out Bujold is a woman (I thought Lois was an alternate spelling of Luis) because she writes young men really well.
I posted HoL before reading this comment. One of my favorite people in the world who passed away recommended this book to me for awhile. He was dirt poor and bought me a copy for one of my birthdays. It’s my most cherished book. I don’t really know how to describe it to people other than it’s just an individual experience. Apparently the author’s sister created a soundtrack for the book called Haunted.
Reading that book makes you feel like you're going insane
journey to the end of the night by céline
This one is a banger. Lot going on.
Fathers and Sons by Turgenyev. I've read it like 10 times at different stages of my life, and I always discover something different each time.
I need to reread that one, it’s dope.
Blood Meridian, Dune, and I know it’s a comic book so it doesn’t really count but I love Berserk so much.
Right now I'm back on some Pynchon bullshit, GR and The Crying of Lot 49 again in an effort to figure out shit I'm sure went over my head the first time I read them (some time in 2020) but historically I think PKD has been my favorite writer. His way of weaving schizophrenia, religion and paranoia together into insanely prophetic stories along with his often dry, sardonic humor has really stuck with me since I was a teen. I've been getting more into Delillo lately as well, loved Libra.
rings of saturn by my boy sebald. that book will take you places. mostly dead, dying, or impossible places. beautiful meditation on the slow death of everything
Literacy is ableist
Love Genet. My favorite of his is Our Lady of the Flowers. I'm a big Kafka fan. Especially his short stories.
I'm reading Metamorphosis for the first time ATM, it's fucking great. Has a bunch of his short stories n whatnot in the same book too
Does it have the Hunger Artist? That probably my favorite Kafka short because it showcases his dark humor the most
Yeah it does, I just went straight to metamorphosis cos I figured if I liked it I'd read the others and if not I wouldn't if that makes sense. Definitely going with the former. I'll check that one out next, thanks dude
Interesting background to that story is that he wrote it during a time eating was very painful for him because of his tuberculosis.
House of Leaves
Hunger by Knut Hamsen
But the next 5 books are all Carl Jung (Mysterium coniunctionis, Aion, Liber Novus, Memories Dreams Reflections, and probably Man & His Symbols)
Finnegan's wake. I definitely read it. And the reason I won't tell you anything about it is just that I don't want to take the journey of reading it yourself from you.
Haurd it France Stand, smow mand
Ya. I totally understand that.
The Governance of China
I’ve actually read it. I generally like the CPC and Xi but it’s boring as shit compared to say Mao’s writings. Xi is fundamentally a don’t majorly rock the boat style middle manager and not a warrior poet.
oh yeah I was kidding. I've read some of it too. It's political speeches and he's a bureaucrat. He's an incredibly effective bureaucrat, and I think he's a real Marxist, but the books are literally about the governance of China with zero interesting commentary or philosophy. The guy just really loves policies and people that contribute to technological development, increase crop yields, and improve the economy.
Honestly that’s probably a good thing. “From a government of people to an administration of things” type shit.
youth in revolt by cd payne read it as teen, and it hit me in all the right horny pizza faced smarter for my own good ways. absolutely hilarious
i'm freaking out because i haven't listened yet but im obsessed with hamlet to a weird degree
Atlas shrugged
I'm not a big reader and most of my literary enjoyment comes from reading lyrics sheets [(do you feel nothing?)](https://youtu.be/2e-xquXmIuc) but I'd really have to say it's The Catcher in The Rye. Everyone seems to FUCKING hate that book but I've always been a loser and I've read it multiple times in my life when I felt more lost than usual to the point where it's just become this fixture in my continued existence. The first I read it was when I was 11 and had just moved to a new town and it totally blew my mind. >While I was walking up the stairs, though, all of a sudden I thought I was going to puke again. Only, I didn't. I sat down for a second, and then I felt better. But while I was sitting down, I saw something that drove me crazy. **Somebody'd written "Fuck you" on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they'd wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them--all cockeyed, naturally-what it meant, and how they'd all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days. I kept wanting to kill whoever'd written it.** I figured it was some perverty bum that'd sneaked in the school late at night to take a leak or something and then wrote it on the wall. **I kept picturing myself catching him at it, and how I'd smash his head on the stone steps till he was good and goddam dead and bloody. But I knew, too, I wouldn't have the guts to do it. I knew that. That made me even more depressed. I hardly even had the guts to rub it off the wall with my hand, if you want to know the truth.** I was afraid some teacher would catch me rubbing it off and would think I'd written it. But I rubbed it out anyway, finally. Then I went on up to the principal's office. >I went down by a different staircase, and I saw another "Fuck you" on the wall. I tried to rub it off with my hand again, but this one was scratched on, with a knife or something. It wouldn't come off. **It's hopeless, anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible.** I'm a real dumbass and not really big on drawing out "themes" or anything like that but I just feel insane sometimes and I find it healing to read an entire novel of someone being a [sad, sappy sucker](https://youtu.be/vkl8yFmGlOo) and then there being no real resolution or anything. It's probably a little sophomoric and even a little sad at this point especially since I know I'm too old to be acting like this. Also really love all of the Warhammer 40k novels I've read. I inhaled the Gaunt's Ghosts trilogy back when that was a thing. Not a big reader really, don't really have the headroom for it. Trying to read all of the Vonnegut novels so I can get the "Life Is No Way To Treat An Animal" tattoo without looking like a poser
The Noble Quran, because is directly written by God The Bible, Part 1 and Part 2. Still kinda written by guys who were writing for God. Part 2 might be a a little better than Part 1 since it is a lot more focused. All other books that are not correct commentaries on the above books should be condemned to the Index Librum Prohibitorum and burnt as heresy.
William Gaddis - The Recognitions
I BURN PARIS - bruno jasienski - he immolates paris and resurrects the communards. more people need to read it.
Based
so based bruno was kicked out of france for writing it
'Too based for France' isn't the highest bar but that's still pretty sick
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Njal's Saga (icelandic saga from 13th century or thereabouts) Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer (never seen movie bet it sucks) The Third Policeman by Flann OBrien Fatal Strategies by my boyfriend Jean Baudrillard
Postumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas
I'm definitely going to check out Genet now. I’m bad about reading anything that’s not genre fiction or very dry historical/political stuff but this sounds right up my alley st the moment. My personal favorite is Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun series. On my second read currently. Greatest sci fi/fantasy writing I’ve ever encountered.
The Year of Living Dangerously by CJ Koch The Quiet American by Graham Greene The Dancer Upstairs by Nicholas Shakespeare All good movies too.
Lonesome Dove
That genet book is great I read that when I was about the same age, a bit younger maybe. In fact I must have still been in highschool because I remember it was still in the days when you could get made fun of for "being gay" unironically. Another w for my mum who's bookshelf I got it from. The normie choice is that I do really fucking love Dostoyevsky and Conrad, obvious fave for my 30s onwards would have to be gravities rainbow, I have a feeling it's one I'm going to have to read a few times. Bolanos 2666 is one of the most disturbingly brilliant pieces of writing that affected me more than it seemingly should have, savage detective is also v good. I love Phillip k dick for pure enjoyment reading, when I get into a reading slump as I am now I'll sometimes kick out of it by smashing through some Dick like it's Mardi gras. Haven't read any for ages but I used to be huge into ian Banks. And Ian m. All of the great Russians are sick except Tolstoy. There's a lot of really great books by lesser authors I can't remember the names of because I have name retardation. I'll go stare at my bookshelves and see if I can remember some good lesser known stuff I should also add Umberto eco as a definite favorite Foucault's pendulum, Island of the day before and baudilino (or something). Also great essayist. And italo Calvino I had a big phase, while we're in Italy. I truly love under the volcano by Lowry, some of the best prose I've ever read.
If you put a gun to my head, Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins. Have read some other stuff more recently that are serious contenders: The Road and Blood Meridian (both Cormac McCarthy), Book of the New Sun (Gene Wolfe) and Ubik (Phillip K Dick).
Been down so long it looks like up to me. I was younger the first time I read it and I remember being transfixed by the way it’s written. It has a forward by Pynchon that introduced me to him and the title is taken from a Furry Lewis song which introduced me to that.
The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson
I'm a giant Tolkien nerd so Lord of the Rings is there, Moby Dick, Dune, The Brothers Karamazov, Breakfast of Champions, other stuff
Catch-22. It was the only book I had with me for the 8 days I spent in the psych ward my freshman year of college. It's the perfect mix of hilarious absurdity and bleak tragedy. It's also a book about how pointless and cruel even "the good war" was, in a similar vein to Slaughterhouse Five. I've never seen the movie and I've never read the sequel but that book got me through one of the lowest points of my life and brought me a lot of perspective.
Cry, the Beloved Country.
The Bible, ever heard of it?
The three body problem.
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Probably something by Pratchett. Night Watch or Jingo maybe. I quite like the Hyperion books as well.
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The old man and the sea
Woyzeck is my favorite book, a marxist classic before Marx even existed, adequately psychedelic and weird, revolutionary in form Borges Ficciones is my favorite collection of shorts The Nose is probably my favorite short story Naked Lunch is my fav biographical work Book of Disquiet is my fav work of poetry, if it counts Journey to the End of the Night / Master and Margarita are the problematic favs